Happy New Year!
On Sunday next, 5th September, Methodists in Bristol start working through a crowded programme of meetings which mark another Church Year. Treasurers will be chasing round asking all those who hold church accounts to complete their reports, and, importantly, some Churches will learn to work with new Ministers. As webservant I personally hope that I can maintain this website to chronicle the progress of the ministries of the Reverend David Hart, Rev. Anita Hart, and Rev. Denise Yeadon and their congregations.
When I was younger I was told that when a Minister moves, she or he will be loved in the first year, treated with a lot less respect in the second, and then ..... We pray that here it will be all good.

Those who blissfully assume that people just play at computing may have a point-5 hours a day is reported as average for all of us, so heaven knows how much some people spend! On the other hand it does take me at least an hour a day, just to tweak or change a few lines in some cases. The programme I use is so 'clever' that it writes on the site things I never touched a key about. Trying to put a link to the Methodist E-NEWS and other items in THE BUZZ  I have just spent 20 minutes doing what I am meant to, clicking various boxes and writing codes, and each time something has disappeared from the page, or the link has not worked (you need to go to
http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=contact.content&cmid=75
which you can find by copying and pasting).
So please be patient if you find moving around this website a problem -my patience is not always proven but I do try my best at the ripe age of 75! I begin to understand those websites which are set up in hope by churches, but are abandoned and frustratingly a public statement that churches want you to read last Christmas's letter and say how 21st Century we are.
Have a nice day!

This is the time when everything goes quiet in churches. Weekly newssheets become 'This Month' compressed into a few entries on an A5 sheet, and the preaching Plan becomes a nightmare for those who make it.
Yet in other ways it is a very lonely time for those who can not go away, so it has been good news that at least two churches are planning 'Holiday at Home' days, when people are invited to a fun day on church premises.
The place which really had the idea well developed is the Methodist church in Chippenham. If you want to do something useful, you could not do better than to see if you can find out how Derrick Norton, Evangelism Network Development Officer in the Methodist Church, does it!

80 years ago Dean H R L Sheppard wrote a book entitled "The Impatience of a Parson", in which he had some pertinent things to say about the institution of the church. All these years later many feel that we have tried, but not succeeded very well, at getting our organisation in the best order. Quite literally, God alone knows how hard people have tried!
One worrying feature of the whole issue is that the impatience is now in the court of the institution, which thinks that there are too many people wanting to hinder their quest for a smoother ride. There was a dramatic statement by a former Secretary of the Methodist Conference in Portsmouth to the effect that the leadership of our Church is near burn-out from overwork, which shows how hard they are working at sorting out things. Yet nobody asked how much they are making work for themselves, as affected Bristol acutely.
The years of struggle to ensure the future of Wesley College finally became partly the victim of the Secretariat's impatience with delay, and had the misfortune to come up at the same time as another big issue about offices in Manchester which some want to move to London. Representatives felt they had to accept on or the other for the chop, and Wesley College got it.
How much better if modern management tactics of encouraging people to be impatient, but not teaching us how to channel it more constructively, got a big makeover!

On Sunday 4th July a cheerful throng of Methodists gathered in Filton to thank those Ministers moving on in the usual Methodist fashion this September. It was a good occasion, made a greater occasion because three members were recognised as having completed years of study and training for the ministry of Local Preaching (entirely unpaid, but Recognised). I put pictures in the Gallery of this website within seven hours, kindly sent on to me by Revd Chris Dobson of the Anglican Diocese.
In a country where the government will continue to sweetly suggest that churches and charities are so full of idle retired people that they can take on any responsibilities now handled by the public sector, we want to do it differently. The established pattern of the Methodist year, with duties and ministries changing at the same weekend at the beginning of each September has a strength and reasonable feel to it.
SO it is doubly-difficult to know that the pressure to economise and rationalise has destroyed the expected  future of all the staff at Wesley College, and of sections of vital church government based in Manchester. The decisions were not made lightly, but they are painful, and call for a prayerful and careful examination of why this blessedly methodical corner of the Kingdom has got into this unhappy situation.
I think of Julian of Norwich's song "All will be well", sung on a memorable recording by Sydney Carter, and trust that it will be so. A past President of the Methodist Conference confidently told a meeting in Newport less than 15 years ago that the last Methodist would tiptoe out of the room and put out the lights in the year 2007. As it seems as though God has other plans for us, we pray that all will be well for ministers, preachers, worship leaders and all Methodists. Last Sunday challenged us to serve much longer.

It must be as difficult to start looking at all the material on our website as anywhere else.
Please look at my new Site Map, opened by a link on the Home Page. I hope to update this regularly like the rest of this site, and eventually have an index.
There is the occasional grumble through the contact page -please grumble or advise that way if you can help improve this.

The 'colour-coding'  throughout this site -though when it was laid out in print on a page nobody seemed to notice -continues:
Local Church items are in RED
Circuit items are in BLUE
Others relating to District or other local events are in GREEN.

To make matters worse, one person, rightly or wrongly -and that's me, feels that all the evidence is that sites set up and run through an office soon get neglected. So one person works as hard as possible to put material in front of you -so that it does not get left behind in the busy life of the more important people in our Circuit.

I dread somebody going to a site which us useless -it seems to say something about how serious the Church is about mission of any kind. The web is cluttered with probably-abandoned websites, some still proclaiming the Christmas Programme for 2008, letters from ministers who have moved on, and worse.

 Happily, the situation seems to have improved in the last year, with some bright updates within our own Circuit. However, of the 57 sites listed on the national list, 15 in the District are no longer open.

It is to be hoped that we will become more of service, and seen to be doing it "for the sake of the Kingdom", as time goes by. If you can find your way around the site, it's worth working on.

Shalom!

At the end of this week some 300 of UK Methodists head for Portsmouth for the Annual Conference. Many others will find it difficult to summon up any enthusiasm -and afterwards some of us may be puzzled by the decisions made there.
Almost exactly nine years after retiring or as Methodists used to say, "sitting down", I miss the certainties and characters of thirty years ago, whilst knowing perfectly well change is bound to come, and I agree with those who find the way the Conference has developed to be sad.
Anyway, watch our home page for links to the Conference and, if you look in the right place, you will find a link through which you can watch Conference business 'live'! I hope it has some signs of life and a change to actually believing again that things which live have to GROW.

I put a paragraph  on this website about the extra service that people can give to any organisation by undertaking tasks that can't, or won't, be paid for. It was triggered by a conversation in which one of the directors of Reckless Orchard, a firm of highly-regarded landscape designers, pointed out that there are people at UWE who have worked out a whole scheme whereby those who are trained and looking to find a suitable job may work as Volunteers.
Yet the only people who seem to be asked are people late  into retirement.
My sadness is that those who cannot themselves be bothered to learn how to the 'Web' then deny themselves its advantages by not asking members of their families who use it all the time to look up on this site what is going on. 12-year old grandchildren will happily look up things for grandma -if she asks. Similarly, those who want help in finding more helpers for important forms of service cannot persuade those who complain "I'm doing enough already" (they are often doing less than some uncomplaining people) to think "I can't, but I know someone who might". That person might be a young graduate whose life would be enriched -as well as their 'cv' improved, by giving time helping in the voluntary sector, even for a few weeks.
Think about it!

After sharing in the Ebenezer 150th Anniversary celebrations in French St Martin, there was one more day before the flight back to Amsterdam with KLM. When we were in the Caribbean about ten years ago I had tried to visit St Eustatius (usually known as ‘Statia’), but we could not book a flight. This time I had found that e-Bookers website offered flights and, what was even better, the tickets were at a concession price for over-65s.

This meant that we were booked on a flight with WINAIR, the only company to fly into Statia, at 8.30 on Monday morning, and the hotel let us get some coffee earlier than usual before the friendly taxi-driver drove us to the airport on the Dutch side. We took our food packs from the evening before for our breakfast, and not very long after we had eaten there was an announcement that anyone booked on the 8.30 flight who wished could get on an earlier flight, so before 8 we went out with about 8 other passengers and boarded the 20-seat Twin Otter aircraft. Joyce found it rather small, and bravely studied the safety instructions card. I had been in Statia when these planes were introduced and they were a big step up from 6-seaters! 25 minutes later we landed on the airstrip of the Statia airport, a friendly basic building with simple but adequate facilities. The Minister, Rev. Florence Daley, had stayed for another day in St Maarten, but she had kindly arranged for Mary, Steward and one of the people who care for the Bethel School, to take care of us. By the time she had come for us the day was getting hot, and it was good to drive in her cool car, and soon to find ourselves in the cool office of Headteacher Woodley at the school behind the church. It was so good to see the huge advance in facilities at the school, and the smart premises, all provide at some sacrifice and the physical labours of the members (especially ladies).

Compared with the bustling life of St Martin, Statia, with 3000 inhabitants, seems quiet -almost sleepy, but there is a development in the form of a large storage facility for fuel oil, and social problems which are a real challenge, even to the school. A strained relationship with one large religious community has continued to plague the island, and, to our surprise, there is a University of St Eustatius –actually a US-based medical school with about 100 students. There is a basic provision for Tourism, but it was not much in evidence, and, very encouraging, it seems that some of the younger generation of Statians are building homes and making their lives there.

Mary let us spend some time in the school, which warmed our hearts and made us so sad, even angry, that Methodists in the UK neither know (or seem to care much) about the unique ministry of our fellow-Methodists in the West Indies, in churches to which people like me were once sent as what were then called ‘Missionaries’ –now ‘Mission Partners’. A bit of support and lots of prayerful support would be so valuable. The Head took us to the nearby home of 2 good members, Carmen and Ashton Suares, and then up to see the Manse (little changed in appearance) where I had lived, and where Philip came as a baby, Gerard spent his early years.
After we had a wrap snack at the open-sided cafeteria at the University, we were given a car trip round the island (it is 2 miles from Tumbledown Dick Bay, the tank farm, to the Eastern White Wall, the pumice cliff at the base of the Quill, the dormant volcano which looms over the town). We saw where concerned people guard the nesting site of Turtles at Concordia Bay, the old Fort where the first salute was given to the Independence of the United States, wandered in extreme hear round the streets I used to walk so many years previously, and finally met a group of church people in the ancient and very special Bethel Church. What a privilege to be able to meet and still be remembered in some cases, by those faithful Methodists of St Eustatius. We flew back in the dark to St Maarten, and I left something of me in St Eustatius.

To crown it all, Miss Louise van Putten, who had been Circuit Steward when I lived in Statia, was with friends in St Maarten, and made the time, despite ill-health, to see us at the Hotel before we went to catch the plane back to Amsterdam, via Curacao on the Tuesday morning. Rev. Bonny Byron kindly came all the way to the airport to send us on our long journey home.

Did it really happen?   

In my previous Blog, (which you ought to read first) I described arriving to share in 150th Anniversary Celebrations at Ebenezer Methodist Chapel in Marigot, St. Martin in the French West Indies.
I ended looking forward to some special events.

These events were:
 a film evening when we viewed previous anniversary celebrations,
an evening with great programme of sacred music, sung by several choirs, including those from other churches in the Circuit,
and a Cultural Evening at the local Sports Centre, with dance groups and cheerful plays (with much laughter).
We rested well and enjoyed the lovely view from our room, the air-conditioned comfort, and the opportunity to walk a short way in the heat to the town of Marigot. We had lunch with the Minister, Revd Bonny Byron, one day, and when we got back from the fine restaurant at Simpson Bay on the Dutch side, I rode with her to the Circuit office, in my day the Manse which seemed quite large: now it was a very small building opposite shopping Mall! There we sorted out the hymns for the Sunday service, in one case by the Secretary the Minister and I singing a tune down the phone to various  choir members until a couple of them identified the first line of the hymn to which it is set in the 1933 Methodist Hymn Book, still used in the Caribbean.
One morning we rode over with Revd John Gumbs and his wife to Philipsburg, looked round the shops full of jewels and duty-free goods, which the shop-keepers were keen to show us because an expected cruise ship had been cancelled. We found jewellers even at the spot where the Catholic Hospital, where Gerard had been born, used to be. We went back to Marigot in a local bus, very reasonable in cost and well-filled with cheerful folk.

Another afternoon, Mrs Rose Miller, who had been a young Local Preacher when I was in St Martin, still a preacher and a Lay Worker in the Circuit, got her husband to drive us round all the churches and places  I used to visit -Colombier, Grand Case, French Cul de Sac and Quartier d’Orleans. There was an anxious time when the car developed a flat tyre, but Rose stopped a young man on his way into town and he changed the wheel, interrupted by some very heavy showers of welcome rain. It was a fascinating ride, seeing so many changes in the countryside, and an encouraging one, seeing the churches alive and well. We completed the circle of the island round through the Dutch side, where the rain had caused quite heavy temporary flooding. It reminded us of the warning from Revd Johnny Gumbs’s wife that the drive to make new land in Philipsburg, capital town on the Dutch side, by filling in the Salt pond with sand dredged from the harbour was going to take flood plains when it rained in the hills. The dredging has made the harbour big enough to take four of the largest cruise liners in the world at the same time, the new land place for more shops....
 
The day for the Anniversary celebration –Sunday, 22nd, arrived, by which time there were several of us guests together in the Hotel: it was great to meet up with those who had been colleagues so many years ago, as well as sharing a meal with Revd Franklyn Manners, the President of the Leeward Islands District, who recalled being one of the young people who came to a youth week we held in  St Eustatius in 1966 or ’67 (he now is in the US Virgin Islands).
After breakfast a taxi fetched Joyce, Mr Manners and me, and took us down to the Church. The stewards were all ladies dressed in smart light blue suits, and the musicians and other people kept arriving until the church was well-filled. (Incidentally, it felt smaller with its smartly-painted walls and ceiling, especially decorated with golden hangings and fine flowers –in ‘my day’ the flowers were usually coloured leaves of what I think were called crotons). It was a strange and humbling experience to be able to lead worship in that impressive place, and the singing and general atmosphere of worship was a tonic. I was also very nervous, and Revd Manners very politely sat in the congregation with Joyce. It was during the service that I was able to present to the Ebenezer Chapel a statuette representing the figure of John Wesley in the Courtyard of the New Room in Bristol, and to take the greetings of several U.K. churches at whose Anniversaries we had been in 2009. These were Bitton and Cock Road, two small chapels in the Bristol and South Gloucestershire Circuit who celebrated their 150th; All Saints, Abingdon (a young 50); and Sandfields, Port Talbot (64th). I think it was appreciated.

We had a pleasant lunch at the hotel with the Revd Manners, and after a brief pause it was back to the Chapel for the main event –the Anniversary Celebration service at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
This was a great act of worship and praise, with fine singing and a 3-hour celebration and act of re-dedication, in the presence of the great and the good from the Community, the neighbouring circuits, and representatives of other denominations. Messages of greeting, reminders of many special times in the past, and a general joy on this special occasion should stay in the memories of the people for years to come. It was my privilege to read a special message of congratulation and greeting from the British Methodist Conference, sent from Brazil via Revd Tom Quenet from Methodist Church House. I also went on to give the formal greetings on behalf of past Ministers from the UK and, although I have always had misgivings about some ‘apologies’ for past outrages in history, found myself moved to express the deep regret of many of us that we from the West represented, and often practised, real prejudice and insensitivity towards our sisters and brothers from Africa. I felt that both the message and the apology were well-received, and my own heart was lighter for speaking as I did.
Then the President of the District preached an encouraging sermon, and everybody was given refreshments in suitably-labelled containers. All so well organised.
That was not quite the end. A coach load of visitors were then taken round the lagoon to the Princess Juliana International Airport for a fine dinner, returning well-satisfied in every sense late into the evening to our hotel.

Return to St. Martin - a report

In the summer of 2009 I received an unexpected email from the West Indies. Like several other ministers from the British Isles who had worked in the area known as the Leeward Islands, I had written a few lines of greeting for a souvenir book being published to mark the 150th Anniversary of the Ebenezer Methodist Chapel in Marigot, St.Martin.
When I had flown there in 1962 the Chapel had been my first charge, and the total population of the island, which uniquely is divided into a French country in the north and a Dutch country, Sint Maarten, in the south, was less than 6,000. To my delight, I received an email asking if I could attend the celebrations at the end of November, 2009, and did not take much persuading to say, “Yes please.” Which is why, on 16th November, my wife Joyce and I, took a flight from Bristol to Amsterdam. Here we were able to meet up with my cousin Ingrid. She had visited my family in Marigot in the 1960s, and we looked over some photos she had saved. The following morning we went to Schipol Airport, and boarded a KLM 747 Jumbo jet, and flew across the ocean to land in the heat of the early afternoon at the same airport I flew into in a 6-seater plane. The airport is still fairly small, and the pilot warned us that he would have to brake sharply after we had swooped in over the heads of people on the beach.
Off the plane, with our suitcases, we walked out to the arrivals area, and the first person I saw was Nestor, now a baggage handler, but a member of the youth fellowship in our younger days and cheerily saying “Hello, Reverend James”, and then to see the kind face of Teacher Denise Louisey –a student in 1962 and also in the MYF when on vacation from college in Guadeloupe.
Much had changed, not only the size of the planes: the population now stands at over 95,000, reputedly made up of over 100 nationalities, and life has changed out of all recognition for many of the people I had known. What had not changed was their faith, and their joy in living out the gospel. The old Dutch-French Circuit has now grown into two Circuits, with a new self-confidence and joy in service which made staging four days of celebration possible and exciting.
Denise took us to the fine Beach Plaza Hotel, with hospitality provided by the Circuit, starting with a lovely flower arrangement in our room overlooking the lovely blue waters of the channel between St Martin and the nearby island of Anguilla. The rest of the week gave us time to relax, look around the shops, even take a dip in the sea, and especially to see how people live in a land where tourism shapes the life of every person, bringing  much prosperity and comforts, and also temptations and challenges.  Whenever we met people the welcome was warm and open, and some even showed me their certificates of baptism, signed by me! The first lady to welcome me at the film night came to tell me that it was her husband, a member who was a fisherman, who took us with my cousin Ingrid, who we had seen only two days previously, to Anguilla so many years before. He greeted me on Sunday morning, sadly now on crutches but still open-faced and friendly.
The church building itself, built only 12 years after the end of slavery to provide a spiritual home for people converted under the ministry of an Anguillian free man, Pastor John Hodge,  has stood firm despite many hurricanes have battered at it, and a serious fire in the 1980s, was immaculate and beautifully decorated for the Anniversary. With a host of visitors and guests, including several ministers from nearby Circuits, and supernumerary ministers from Anguilla, we were dined at a local café, and welcomed at evening events in the church.


My next blog will describe what happened!

In the recent Methodist Heritage Forum meeting in Bristol all churches were encouraged to join the scheme, so successful in so many areas, to take part in the DOORS OPEN DAY(s) in September, when many members of the public take the opportunity to see the inside of important buildings. In the City of Bristol thousands walk from site to site using a comprehensive Guide, and John Wesley's Chapel and the Charles Wesley House received over 1,000 visitors in each of the past 2 years.
What is important to realise is that arrangements for one September begin as soon as the doors close for the previous ones.
Members of some churches in our Circuit which have opened their doors in recent years have been dispirited, but it may be because they were not in a local Guide. The procedure for offering to be part of one seems to be kept fairly quiet: but it does not mean that offers to join will not be welcomes.

What is important is to apply to your local Council NOW before the end of February. You will be almost overwhelmed by the difference in numbers, and become a vital part of a Fresh Expression of showing that our Mission has been formed, and can grow, by understanding and being proud of our past.

Contact this website if we can find out more for you, please.

Enjoy!

A minister rang me (the 'webservant') to ask me to tell the congregation in some churches that Sunday's services were cancelled due to the dangerous icy roads forecast.
Within 15 minutes the information was available to the world, including tens of members, or even more, in whose homes Computers were switched on and who were directly involved. If I had been told about more such special arrangements, the news could have quickly and easily have been spread over hundreds within Bristol and South Gloucestershire.
In the next 12 hours in homes all round the circuit in those very homes some would have said "I wonder when our minister/steward/friends will ring to tell us whether or not they care enough about safety and don't expect us to risk our necks by sliding to Church."
If you are one of the six or seven people who open this website -and are actually involved in one of the churches in the BSG Circuit -may I ask a favour, please? Can we find any way to encourage more members to use the Internet as a friendly window on our world. Even parents and grandparents have younger members of the family who would not even mind opening this website for a few minutes between visits to Facebook and/or Bebo (did you know that "Bebo" is an acronym for "Blog early, blog often"?) -even if to smile indulgently about what we're trying to pass on -and say "Hey Gran, you've got Sunday morning at home!" (Maybe you'll say then something uplifting about still giving time to pray, study the bible, or listen to a taped sermon, or maybe not!)

I still believe that the web is worth using for good.

Take care!

It is always interesting to hear on any religious radio or tv programme, or to read in the religious press, how many people whose attitude to belief ranges from agnosticism to militant atheism spend time listening, watching or reading what Christians say. Sometimes I wonder if there would be more outcry from atheists than believers if (when) the BBC axes 'Songs of Praise".
I returned the compliment and looked up the Secular Society website, and read some alternative thoughts for the day, and they clearly are written by people who tune in religiously each day to the 'real thing', choking on their cornflakes. (Maybe I'm biassed, but I reckon Lord Griffiths* and Colin Morris make better listening!)

It was therefore interesting to look on the Methodist Church website to see that there is a Pod Radio interview with the young lady who benefitted from Professor Dawkins' generous payment for 'those advertisements on the buses' which say that there is probably no God.

*Lord Griffiths wrote a gracious reply to that excellent journalist Polly  Toynbee, who wrote an anti-Christmas piece in the Guardian for Christmas in the Methodist Recorder recently. If you do not subscribe, ask somebody to let you see it. It's tempting to ask the paper for permission to reproduce it on this website.